The Writer's Studio: Poetry as Experiment & Excavation

How can poets excavate their memories and observations of the world around them to examine what it means to be human in both society and the natural world, uncovering truths that are at once personal and universal? How can we structure language within the field of the page to create poetic forms that illustrate and enhance these interconnections? In this panel, poets Jami Macarty, Johanna Skibsrud, and Valerie Witte discuss how they mine their individual experiences, along with research across a range of disciplines—such as history, anthropology, natural science, and feminism—and through experimentation and intuition give shape to ideas and images, drawing out deeper meanings while bringing these “bodies of text” fully into being.

The Panelists:

Jami Macarty teaches creative writing at Simon Fraser University, writes essays, reviews, and poetry, and is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series, The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award - Poetry Arizona, and four chapbooks, including The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more, visit: www.jamimacarty.com

Johanna Skibsrud is the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction including the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novel The Sentimentalists and, most recently, the essay collection Fool (Routledge 2023), and a poetry collection, Medium (Book*hug 2024). Born in Nova Scotia, Johanna completed her PhD in English Literature at the Université de Montréal and is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

Valerie Witte is the author of A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie Press, 2023); One Thing Follows Another (punctum books, forthcoming) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), both in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal; and a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015). Her latest chapbook is Listening Through the Body (above/ground, 2021), and her work has appeared in publications such as VOLT, Diagram, Interim, and The Hunger. She has attended residencies through The Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, and La Porte Peinte Center for the Arts and is currently a member of Airlie Press. More at valeriewitte.com.

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